The Town that Turned Poverty into a Prison SentenceMost states shut down their debtors prisons more than 100 years ago; in 2005, Harpersville, Alabama, opened one back up.

In Alabama, people know Harpersville best as a speed trap, the stretch of country highway where the speed limit changes six times in roughly as many miles. Indeed, traffic is by far the biggest business in the town of 1,600, where there is little more than Big Man’s BBQ, the Sudden Impact Collision Center and a dollar store.

In 2005, the court’s revenue was nearly three times the amount that the town received from a sales tax, Harpersville’s second-largest source of income. Fines had become key to Harpersville’s development, but it proved difficult to chase down those who did not pay. So, that year, Harpersville decided to follow in the footsteps of other Alabama cities and hire JCS to help collect.

JCS is considered a significant player within the private probation universe. To keep business booming, JCS representatives crisscross the South promoting the company as a free and effective “supervision services” program. (“Helping municipal court clerks kick their heels up in joy,” JCS promises in one magazine ad.) And yet, if private probation has seemed like a solution for struggling Southern cities, it has been a disaster for the many poor residents who are increasingly trapped in a criminal justice system that demands money they do not have, then punishes them for failing to pay.

The Constitution ostensibly protects people from falling into this kind of debt-and-punishment trap. In the 1983 case Bearden v. Georgia, the Supreme Court ruled that to jail a probationer for failure to pay a fine without inquiring first into that person’s ability to pay violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But if neither the company nor the court seeks to determine indigence—and that is common—then protections for the poor never kick in.

This is precisely what happened in Harpersville, where JCS’s private probation model met a small-town court in which the letter of the law did not always apply. In Shelby County, the richest in Alabama, there remains a yawning gap between the haves and have-nots, yet neither the court nor JCS made any effort to determine if people could pay; it was simply not in their interest. At the same time, money collected from probationers went missing, leading to the indictment of a lead JCS probation officer. People were jailed for months for failure to pay without seeing a judge. And two people locked up for fines to Harpersville died while in custody.

It was a system of extraction and coercion so flagrant that Alabama Circuit Court Judge Hub Harrington likened it to a modern-day “debtors’ prison.” In a July 2012 ruling in a civil action brought on behalf of Debra Ford and three others, Harrington wrote: “The court notes that [debtors’ prisons] generally fell into disfavor by the early 1800s, though the practice appears to have remained commonplace in Harpersville. From a fair reading of the defendants’ testimony one might ascertain that a more apt description of the Harpersville Municipal Court practices is that of a judicially sanctioned extortion racket…. Disgraceful.”

Winston Niles Rumfoord wrote:No, they're lounging around on the balconies of their luxury Section 8 condos watching the taxpayers going to and from work.

You forgot to mention drinking beer, taking drugs and watching the big screen HD TV , all that they bought on those generous SNAP cards, and talking on their "Obamaphone" free cell phone for hours on end.

"“There are some people in politics and in the press who can’t be confused by the facts,” “They just will not live in an evidence-based world." Hillary ClintonDamm she will make a great president !

Winston Niles Rumfoord wrote:No, they're lounging around on the balconies of their luxury Section 8 condos watching the taxpayers going to and from work.

You were clearly born without that elusive empathy gene. In the past, I defended some black people I thought were being treated poorly, and you assumed I was black. Another time, I suggested that gay people should be treated just like everyone else, and you assumed I was gay.

Amazingly, I'm neither gay nor black.

Has it ever occurred to you to show basic human decency and understanding to anyone that didn't fall precisely into your own personal demographic?

I think you either don't get it, or you purposefully ignore the point of the original post.

People are getting sent away because they are poor, and powerfully connected people are profiting from it. They are jailing for dollars.

If that's not the definition of "fascism" it is entirely too close for my comfort.

Do you have any desire to come out from your facade, and explain why you think this is a good thing?